Bobby Jindal’s Troubles at Home

[FriendlyFire]

Bobby Jindal’s Troubles at Home

Gov. Bobby Jindal has a plan: Do for the country what he’s done for Louisiana. Cut taxes and cut the government workforce and the economy will bloom, he promises. It’s a message he’s peddling as he lays the groundwork for a presidential run. Indeed, as Jindal is quick to say, private-sector job growth and the economy in Louisiana have outpaced the national average during his tenure as governor. “I’m a fiscal conservative,” he told the influential Conservative Political Action Conference last year, in explaining these successes.

But here’s what Jindal doesn’t say: Louisiana’s budget is hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s getting worse. He inherited a $900 million surplus when he became governor seven years ago, and his administration’s own budget documents now show the state is facing deficits of more than $1 billion for as far as the eye can see. There are no easy solutions today because Jindal has increasingly balanced the budget by resorting to one-time fixes, depleting the state’s reserve funds and taking money meant for other purposes.

“There are all kinds of tricks in the budget,” said Greg Albrecht, the state legislature’s chief economist, a nonpartisan position. Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate has risen from 3.8 percent when Jindal took office, a point below the national average then, to 6.7 percent today—nearly a full point higher than today’s national average. Jindal omits these inconvenient facts when he bashes President Barack Obama and Washington for “bankrupting” the federal government and mismanaging the national economy.

Republican state legislators are particularly scathing in saying Jindal no longer exercises leadership, but they don’t want to go on the record for fear of losing their choice committee assignments or having the governor kill their pet projects. (A governor in Louisiana has so much power that he appoints the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate, along with committee chairmen.) Jim Richardson, an economist at Louisiana State University who sits on a four-member board that determines the state’s available revenue, predicted that next year’s governor—regardless of party—will have to call a special session on the budget, as the first order of business, to clean up what Jindal has left behind.

The pledge wasn’t an issue when Jindal became governor in 2008 and the state had a healthy budget surplus thanks to the taxes produced by massive federal government and private insurance spending following Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. The state legislature cut income taxes for higher-end earners by a total of about $700 million per year. Jindal was not an initial supporter, perhaps because of warnings that the surplus would not last as the outside spending tapered off. He went along with the plan, though, and now takes credit for it.

When the national recession hit, Louisiana lost about $1 billion in revenue as consumers and companies spent less. That forced Jindal and the state legislature to take a sharp knife to a state budget in which much funding—such as for K-12 schools and additional pay for firefighters and police—is protected constitutionally and thus invulnerable to drastic cuts. Refusing to raise revenues to cover the shortfall, Jindal instead turned his sights on cutting health care for the poor and slicing funding for the state’s public colleges and universities.

It was not enough. He then shaved another $341 million in the middle of the 2009 budget cycle to avoid ending the year with a deficit. Jindal—buoyed by the tax cuts, his anti-government rhetoric, a growing state economy and his opposition to abortion—won reelection in 2011 with 65 percent of the vote.

Jindal’s cuts to the public colleges and universities have been the deepest of any state over the past eight years, according to the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities. Raising tuition—which does not count as a tax increase, although the effect is the same—has filled most of the gap. Tuition at the public institutions will be 90 percent higher in 2015 than when Jindal took office.

Reluctant to pay the political price to cut more and sticking by the pledge has put Jindal in a fiscal box. His solution: Rely increasingly on what Richardson, the LSU economist, calls “all sorts of gimmicks”—balancing the budget through one-time sales of state property, legal settlements with companies sued by the state, the elimination of vacant state jobs and a tax amnesty program. “Doing it for one year is not bad policy,” said Richardson. “But doing it for four or five years is not sustainable.”

Jindal administration has taken about $7 million per year away from the state park maintenance fund. The result: a $21 million backlog in repair work for state parks.

Jindal bragged in a 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had ended the practice of using one-time money to fill budget gaps, but he now says the state legislature’s budgeting practices have forced him to resort to the device. This year’s budget has $1.1 billion in money that won’t be available next year—four times as much as the 2013 budget.

When Jindal took office, the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly had $800 million. That money is now gone. The Office of Group Benefits—the health insurance program for current and retired state employees—had $500 million in 2011.

It’s staggering the number of days he’s gone. I don’t know what he’s doing. It does not appear that the budget problems are on his radar screen.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/bobby-jindal-campaigning-114948.html#ixzz3R1bDg8S4

Why this is like the Prefect Republican record to run for Republican President.
Taxs cuts for the very rich, gutting education, gutting healthcare, massive deficits and an imploding economy.

/faceplam

 

[Cutlass]

But here’s what Jindal doesn’t say: Louisiana’s budget is hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s getting worse. He inherited a $900 million surplus when he became governor seven years ago, and his administration’s own budget documents now show the state is facing deficits of more than $1 billion for as far as the eye can see. There are no easy solutions today because Jindal has increasingly balanced the budget by resorting to one-time fixes, depleting the state’s reserve funds and taking money meant for other purposes.

Yep. That's what 'fiscal conservatism' has become in this country.

 

[JollyRoger]

The one thing that Jindal has going for him is that he didn't screw it up as much as Sam Brownback.

 

[gay_Aleks]

He might be a fiscal conservative, but sure as hell he's spending the budget rather liberally.

 

[jackelgull]

I don't think he's going to get re elected, but probably some stooge with similar ideas and policies will. Because obviously Jindal wasn't a true fiscal conservative so someone else will implement the same ideas and somehow make it work.

 

[FriendlyFire]

The one thing that Jindal has going for him is that he didn't screw it up as much as Sam Brownback.

I am pretty sure Republicans re-elected him.
Besides OBAMA

Defenders say the revenue shortfall was attributable not to the Kansas cuts, but to Obama administration tax policies that have suppressed the business climate nationwide.
Brownback’s reforms would produce solid economic gains, but only if given time to develop.

Claims of Kansas struggling economically are political distortions

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Things like this are what make the Republican primaries so hilarious. You get a bunch of these 'fiscal conservatives' calling each other out for assignations in men's rooms, or questioning parentage of each other's children, or whatever outright slanders they can throw at each other personally. But since they are all devoted to the same oft failed policies none of them will point out the failures of their opponents in following those policies. So after a savage primary process when the best blood letter and mud spreader emerges, barely staggering on the personal front, the Democrats point at their glaring record of economic failure and the public says "Why didn't anyone point this out in the primaries? Geeeez, what a frakking loser!"

 

[Hygro]

Things like this are what make the Republican primaries so hilarious. You get a bunch of these 'fiscal conservatives' calling each other out for assignations in men's rooms, or questioning parentage of each other's children, or whatever outright slanders they can throw at each other personally. But since they are all devoted to the same oft failed policies none of them will point out the failures of their opponents in following those policies. So after a savage primary process when the best blood letter and mud spreader emerges, barely staggering on the personal front, the Democrats point at their glaring record of economic failure and the public says "Why didn't anyone point this out in the primaries? Geeeez, what a frakking loser!"

Hm I hadn't thought of that. That's a really good observation.

 

[downtown]

FWIW, I was a public employee under Jindal's administration and interacted with his wife and his office a few times. I could not have been less impressed. For somebody who is actually a smart person, he's made some horribly stupid decisions, and empowered one of the dumbest state legislatures in the country.

Louisiana was already a horrible place to live. Somehow, he made it worse.

 

[Commodore]

Defenders say the revenue shortfall was attributable not to the Kansas cuts, but to Obama administration tax policies that have suppressed the business climate nationwide.
Brownback’s reforms would produce solid economic gains, but only if given time to develop.

I'm pretty sure it has become official Republican policy to just automatically blame Obama for all of their own failures. I'm guessing that's why they never made good on their threats to impeach him. If they actually managed to succeed who would they have to blame for their own ineptness?

 

[Berzerker]

kansas unemployment is down to 4.2% and red states dominate the top 1/3 with the lowest rates

 

[Commodore]

kansas unemployment is down to 4.2% and red states dominate the top 1/3 with the lowest rates

Unemployment rates are no indication of economic health since the unemployment rate usually fails to factor in those who have given up looking for work or those who have retired.

 

[Berzerker]

in that case

Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate has risen from 3.8 percent when Jindal took office, a point below the national average then, to 6.7 percent today—nearly a full point higher than today’s national average.

aint relevant

 

[FriendlyFire]

kansas unemployment is down to 4.2% and red states dominate the top 1/3 with the lowest rates

WINNING ........ no wait

 

[Commodore]

in that case



aint relevant

You're right, it's not relevant. Jindal (and pretty much every other Republican governor) is grossly incompetent for many other reasons though. So-called "red states" are consistently among the poorest, most economically sluggish and, ironically, some of the biggest recipients of federal aid money.

Face it, Republicans simply don't know how to run a functional, or even sane, economy.